U.S. crude oil futures were marginally lower in post-settlement trading Tuesday after the American Petroleum Institute reported a surprise increase in weekly domestic crude inventories.
Crude Oil WTI Futures, the U.S. benchmark, recently traded at $68.45 a barrel following the report after settling up 0.3% at $68.59 a barrel.
U.S. crude inventories rose by about 499,000 barrels for the week ended Dec, 6 compared with a build of 1.2M barrels reported by the API for the previous week. Economists were expecting a draw of 1.3M barrels.
Gasoline stockpiles increased by about 2.9M barrels, while distillate inventories — the class of fuels that includes diesel and heating oil — climbed by 2.5M barrels.
The official government inventory report is due Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).
